lwood | Tidbits

Yesterday, while at Greyhaven for Sunday Tea with a Gentleman, I found myself having to explain the Internet, and why his current satellite-based solution was inefficient.

"Do you remember Senator Stevens, and how he said 'the Internet is not a dump truck, it's a series of tubes?'"

"Sure!"

"While that's really off the mark if you have any tech savvy at all, if you're speaking to a room full of a hundred Luddites--as the Honorable Gentleman from Alaska was--it's not terribly bad.

"Dial-up is coming through a very skinny tube:" I held up thumb and forefinger to indicate something like narrow aquarium tubing. Then I made the opening wider. "Broadband, naturally, is a wider tube."

"Go on."

"The trouble with your satellite is that you do have a really wide tube? But it's really, really long: your tube has to go to a point twenty-six thousand miles above the equator, directly south of Texas. Everything's going really fast, but it has to go a loooooong way."

And the student was enlightened.

Congratulations, I am now the proud parent of a bouncing baby bronchitis. I called the advice nurse--you know, Kaiser's way of keeping you from seeing a doctor, but as an informed responsible operator of my physical machinery I am all right with this.

I told

countgeiger and

dpaxson, "I think it's viral."

The advice nurse, when I called her, agreed with me: viral. Suck it up. Treat the symptoms, be ready for two to three weeks of Janis Joplin impressions and lung-hwarfing. Yay. I picked up Robitussin DM, which keeps a rein on the hacking but makes my sleep restless, which means less rest, more confusion for cats, and more fretting of husband. But it's fine during the day. However, she could, and did, phone down a scrip for a codeine-bearing cough syrup, which has the same primary effect but completely complementary side effects: sleep like rocks. Thus, it's great for nighttime.

They also have completely complementary effects on my lower digestive tract. So, if nothing else, the penalties offset.

However! I think the best idea was one suggested by one of my users today: he heard me and allowed as how I sounded like I should see a doctor.

As said user is himself an MD (we're well-stocked with these here at the Mad Scientists' Home), I allowed as how I did, and outlined the situation described above, including the Changing of the Potions.

Friends, in his esteemed opinion as a medical professional, I should take bourbon, day and night.

I have switched multi-protocol IM clients from Proteus (whose original author sold it, and whose successors may have been assumed bodily into heaven for all they've spoken lately) to Adium, which has less fussy support for things like LJ Chat, Google Talk, and--hooray!--encrypted AIM chat.

This means little to almost everyone, although if I can't work out who you are, Gentle Correspondent, from your IM handle, I might have to once again ask to whom it may apply: you have been warned.

Unless you're one of those folks who hits me up via ICQ in Russian, in which case FOAD.

Random Knitting Burble:

I'm coming to the end of main body knitting on my Cap Shawl from Victorian Knits Today, but the last part promises great tedium, what with its nigh-800 stitches of all plain knit per row, to say nothing of all-plain-purl, after which the border will be nearly a relief.

Whenever I have an evening at home, I work on

erynn999's Print o'the Wave, but I haven't had an evening home in a month or more that didn't consist of being very, very limp so, um, work is very slow there.

Once those two shawls, and the hrafnsocken, are done, my next big lacy thing will, I think, be this Seaweed Stole, at which point, perhaps, I may feel comfortable passing my first NiceOceanLady shawl (the triangle of seven different fuzzy yarns) on to a lady on the East Coast who'd coveted it a year and a half ago.

But as a different, woodsy sort of pretty, here's one combining lace...and entrelac: the Forest Path shawl. I know who'd like one of those already.

Tonight, friends, I'm off for yet another extended editing session of ~~The Bataan Death Book~~ Our Troth. On the advice of an accredited physician, I daresay that these efforts shall be attended and assisted by the vættir of Knob Creek. ;)

-- Lorrie

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Work: The Mad Scientists' Home
Current Music: IT Department chatter

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dr-beowulf.livejournal.com

Maybe you should put the Vaettir of Knob Creek in the Acknowledgements list. . . just as I suggested that the first volume should have listed Johnnie Walker, Jack Daniels, Bud Weiser, and my Old Grand-Dad. (An' we drink alone. . . yeah, with nobody else. . .)

(Note to Those Who Are Not Our Troth Editors: The above was written with tongue firmly in cheek. No livers were harmed in the making of this book. None of our careful and painstaking scholarly work was written under the alfluence of incahol.)

From:

faeryl.livejournal.com

>But as a different, woodsy sort of pretty, here's one combining lace...and entrelac: the Forest Path shawl.

*looks around all sneaky-like*

If you haven't already obtained it, I have the Interweave issue the pattern's in. You're welcome ot borrow it.

Hope you feel better soon! :-)

From:

faeryl.livejournal.com

*GAH!* that's "to"

From:

quirkwidget.livejournal.com

"The trouble with your satellite is that you do have a really wide tube? But it's really, really long: your tube has to go to a point twenty-six thousand miles above the equator, directly south of Texas. Everything's going really fast, but it has to go a loooooong way."

Well, there's that, and then there's the fact that there's apparently a traffic-limit imposed on the relay by the FCC or someone. They're only allowed so much throughput, regardless of their capabilities -- or at least they were when last I updated my brain on such matters. So, already slow satellite also is prone to "you downloaded more than three pictures today; we're cutting your tube down to 1/8 its size because you were greedy."

Bah.

(Why, yes, I LOVE my satellite... whyever do you ask?)

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